118 CRITICS' ROUND TABLE KENNETH TYNAN Pundit, producer, and panjandrum of England's Natlonal Theatre, Kenneth Tynan was The New Yorker's man on the aisle from 1958 to 1960. T HE supreme virtue of "A Raisin in the Sun," Lorraine Hans- berry's new play at the Ethel Barrymore, is its proud, joyous proxim- ity to its source, which is life as the dramatist has lived it. I will not pretend to be impervious to the facts; this is the first Broadway production of a work by a colored authoress, and it is also the first Broadway production to have been staged by a colored director. (His name is Lloyd Richards, and he has done a sensible, sensi- tive, and impeccable job.) I do not see why these facts should be ig- nored, for a play is not an entity in itseJL it is a part of history, and I have no doubt that my knowledge of the his- torical context predis- posed me to like "A Raisin in the Sun" long before the house lights dimmed. Within ten minutes, however, lik- ing had matured into absorption. The re- laxed, freewheeling interplay of a magni- ficent team of Negro actors drew me un- resisting into a world of their making, their suffering, their think- ing, and their re- joicing. Walter Lee Younger's family lives in a roach-ridden Chi- cago tenement. The father, at thirty- five, is still a chauffeur, deluded by dreams of financial success that nag at the nerves and tighten the lips of his anxious wife, who ekes out their income by working in white kitchens. If she wants a day off, her mother-in- law advises her to plead flu, because it's respectable. ("Otherwise they'll think you've been cut up or some- thing.") Five people-the others being Walter Lee's progressive young sister, and his only child, an amiable small boy-share three rooms. They want to escape, and their chance comes when Walter Lee's mother receives the in- surance money to which her recent widowhood has entitled her. She re- jects her son's plan, which is to invest the cash in a liquor store; instead, she buys a house for the family in a district where no Negro has ever lived. Almost Claudia McNeil, Ruby Dee, and Sidney Poitier in CCA Raisin in the Sun. " , at once, white opinion asserts itself: in the shape of a deferential little man from the local Improvement Associa- tion, who puts the segregationist case so gently that it almost sounds like a plea for modified togetherness. At the end of a beautifully written scene, he offers to buy back the house, in or- der-as he explains-to spare the Youngers any possible embarrassment. His proposal is turned down. But be- fore long Walter Lee has lost what re- mains of the money to a deceitful chum. He announces forthwith that he will go down on his knees to any white man who will buy the house for more than its face value. From this degradation he is finally saved; shame brings him to his feet. The Youngers move out, and move on; a rung has been scaled, a point has been made, a step into the future has been soberly taken. Miss Hansberry's piece is not without sentimentality, partictÙarly in its reverent treatment of Walter Lee's mother; bril- liantly though Claudia McNeil plays the part, monumentally trudging, up- braiding, disapproving, and consoling, I wish the dramatist had refrained from idealizing such a stolid old conselVative. (She forces her daughter, an agnostic, to repeat after her, "In my mother's house there is still God.") But elsewhere I have no quibbles. Sidney Poi- tier blends skittishness, apathy, and riotous de- spair into his portrait of the mercurial Walter Lee, and Ruby Dee, as his wife, is not afraid to let friction and frank- ness get the better of conventional affection. Diana Sands is a buoy- antly assured kid sister, and Ivan Dixon is a Ni- gerian intellectual who replies, when she asks him whether Negroes in power wotÙd not be Just as vicious and corrupt as whites, "I live the an- swer." The cast is flawl- i ess, and the teamwork on the first night was as effortless and exu- beran t as if the play had been running for a hundred per- formances. I was not present at the opening, twenty-four years ago, of Mr. Odets' "Awake and Sing!," but it must have been a similar occasion, gen- erating the same kind of sympathy and communicating the same kind of warmth. After several curtain calls, the . audience began to shout for the author, ê whereupon Mr. Poitier leaped down J/ .-/ - =-